Susan Gately
Bishop Donal McKeown 
Bishop Donal McKeown has said that experiencing narratives of victimhood and hopelessness during a recent trip to the Holy Land reminded him of ministering in Belfast during the civil conflict in the North.
The Bishop of Derry was speaking on his return from the Holy Land where he was part of the annual ‘Holy Land Co-Ordination’ delegation of 15 bishops from across Europe, North America and South Africa.
This year the weeklong trip focussed in particular on young people from both Israeli and Palestinian communities. “We were in an Israeli school with 16-year-olds, we met people in a gap year, we met university students” he told The Irish Catholic.
“Those of us who have come from divided communities – the bishops from Germany, South Africa and myself from Belfast – 30 years ago we’d have thought [situations of] apartheid [in South Africa], the Berlin Wall, in Northern Ireland were absolutely insoluble.
“But we could say ‘It’s amazing what can happen’. We weren’t saying we had a solution, but ‘Keep believing that flowers can bloom in the desert’,” he said.
Their first job, said Bishop McKeown was to encourage the very small Christian community to stay. “If there are 2 million in Gaza, 2,000 are Christian and 10% of those are Catholic.” The Christian community which was neither Jewish nor Muslim played a significant role, he said, because it was “a community that builds bridges where others don’t want bridges built.”
In their final statement, the bishops, sharing the hopes of the young people, called on the people in their lands, to act in solidarity with them through supporting organisations creating jobs, through prayer and pilgrimages to the Holy Land and through “standing resolutely” against those seeking to create “further divisions.”
